Moonsteed

by Manda Benson

  “At the centrifuge, at eight.”

  Sheets of paper and graffiti covered the wall of the mezzanine. One poster showed a holograph of a middle-aged man with spectacles and a ginger beard. That was Sidney Worrall, formerly something in finance and currently a Spokesman for the Meritocracy. Verity took a marker pen out of her pocket and drew balls and a phallus on Sidney Worrall’s forehead.

  “That’s not very constructive,” said Vladimir.

  “It’s a public expression space,” Verity replied. “Anyone can write what they like on it. I guess you don’t have those in Russia.”

  Vladimir raised his palms and made an exasperated face. “You have the liberty of free speech and you abuse it doing things like that? In some countries, they don’t have that privilege.”

  “His opinions stink.”

  Vladimir sighed. He held out his hand. “Can I borrow your pen?”

  “Not if you’re going to use it to write Sidney Worrall’s opinions.”

  “I’m not. I’m going to write my own opinions.”

  Verity put the marker in his hand. He snapped off the cap, and wrote “More funding for horse gengineers” on Sidney Worrall’s lapel, then continued to write something else in small letters on the man’s jacket.

  “I’m not standing about while you write War and Peace. I’m going to vote. You can gimme my pen back tomorrow.” Verity went to the door, shouting over her shoulder as she left the room, “In Soviet Russia, wall writes on you.”

  * * * *

  Back in her quarters, Verity took up her seat at her computer and began to look through the points of law and regulations that had been nominated for referendum by the Electorate. About a month after she’d arrived on Callisto, the moon had been declared an official province and, with the base having only a few hundred inhabitants, that surely made it the smallest province in the entire Meritocracy. It also meant its electorate was entitled to nominate and cast prerogative votes on matters that only affected Callisto and its denizens. One of the first such matters to be nominated and voted in was that Referendum Day on Callisto would be the afternoon of the twenty-four-hour day on which the sun rose.

  Referendum Day this time around didn’t coincide with the Meritocracy’s universal referenda, which occurred once every Martian month, so there were only these provincial prerogative votes and nominations to be dealt with. As a tier-two meritocrat, Verity was entitled to nominate two matters per referendum day, and to cast votes with a weighting of two on each of the nominations with the highest vote from the previous referendum day.

  She had already decided to nominate a review of the exercise centrifuges at the facility with the intention of voting for more centrifuges to be built for the horses if that nomination was then popular enough to go to referendum the next time. She did that first, using both of her nominations on the same issue, because she saw it as being more pressing than any other issues she could come up with.

  After submitting her nominations to the ANT, Verity turned her attention to the nominations from last referendum day that had been brought forward to today’s referendum. There were four of them: on frequency and allocation of radio communications access, about possibly improving the quality of the food, about regulations for importing animals as pets and, as usual, about division of the resources of the base’s only ANT between the Sky Forces and the scientific personnel. In addition to this, each of the thirty Spokesmen for the Meritocracy--people chosen directly by the Electorate each year, supposedly for their balanced opinions and clear judgment to act in case of emergency on behalf of the Electorate--had written a statement on the prerogative issues for Callisto, explaining their opinions on the nominations and links to statistics and reading material to back up the opinions. Whereas there was nothing to stop anyone from simply casting a vote without bothering to do any research, it was generally encouraged and thought responsible to read the letters from the Spokesmen and try to make one’s vote from as balanced a perspective as possible.

  Verity first opened the letter from Spokesman Julia Tindall. Tindall had been a zoologist before becoming a Spokesman, and she was always the first person Verity would vote for on the universal Spokesman referendum each year. It began with a salutation to the electorate of the province of Callisto and, as Verity had expected, the first comment on her letter was about the nomination for pets. She urged caution about bringing species to Callisto whose tolerance for low gravity had not been tested, as subjecting an animal to an environment it could not healthily cope with was inhumane. Tindall recommended voters choose the option to allow species of pets not considered dangerous and known to be able to tolerate exposure to low gravity.

  Verity read through the other comments and looked at some of the references. She read Sidney Worrall’s letter with disdain, then set about reading the other twenty-eight.

  Chapter 3

  Verity came awake with a start, heart pounding and sweat plastering her bedcover to her skin. She at once moved her hand to grasp the hard, cool shape of her wakizashi where it lay on the mattress, pressing it against her abdomen and clutching its familiar solidity with both hands. The sequence with John Aaron and the horse had been playing out in her dreams, only this time, she had not moved fast enough when the shadow fell over her, and it had been her ribs cracking under the blow of hoofs, and she who had fallen to the ice. It had been he who had stood over her with her own sword, the desperate climax of the dream bursting through into consciousness as the bloodied steel rushed through the air for its coup de grace.

  Against the shaking thump of her pulse, she tried to reassure herself that it had been her training that had saved her life. Yet as her fingers squeezed the leather weave of the knife’s handle grip, it seemed more the result of chance and blind fortune.

  Verity sat up, the sweat on her body cold against the air. She hugged the covers around herself and tucked her chin down against her chest, breathing deeply as she checked the time from the ANT. She needed to be in the centrifuge to train that genetic engineer in two hours. There was little point in trying to go back to sleep now.

  It had been the same the first time Verity had seen a corpse, back when she had started with the Sky Forces on Mars. The memory of it had invaded her sleep for several nights afterward. Then it had happened a year or so later, after a particularly horrible accident. Verity and another person had been chasing a thief off a gyromag, and the fool had fallen from the gantry and struck a pylon on the way down, ripping his abdomen open. When she shut her eyes sometimes, she could still see the mortal horror on his face just before the moment life slipped away, and see and smell his viscera strewn across the concourse.

  She gave the thought-prompt for the lights, telling herself it was a normal reaction to trauma, which would pass in time. With the lights on, her quarters looked bland and unthreatening. No shadows were here now to play havoc with her peripheral vision.

  She’d intended no contact with Gecko again. He’d not replied to her last two messages. Perhaps this was a moment of weakness she’d regret later, but she needed him. Perhaps it would be worth giving it one last go. Verity got up, still with the bedcover wrapped around herself, and switched on her computer. She left the camera off and used the microphone to record a message.

  “Hi, Gecko. It’s Verity. I just want to know you’re okay. Send me a message. I hope Titan’s going well.” She paused, swallowed. “’Cause weird shit’s going on here on Callisto.”

  She stopped the recording, marked the message as being for Lieutenant Uxbridge of Titan and sent it to the transmissions queue.

  * * * *

  Vladimir shuffled into the centrifuge room as though he feared he would crash into the ceiling if he put any effort into his stride. He had on a yellow t-shirt and knee-length khaki shorts with trainers and socks that came up to just below his knees.

  “I said eight!”

  Vladimir looked at his watch. “It’s five minutes past!”

  “It’s still late! You look ridiculous
! Don’t they give you standard-issue clothes?”

  Vladimir shrugged. “Who’re they?”

  “I dunno. The base? The company that sent you here?”

  “No. In my country, people have free choice about what clothes they wear.”

  “In your case, free choice is a liability too far. At least get some trousers off the equipment officer. You look like you’re in the space scouts.” Verity held out her hand. “Pen?”

  Vladimir glared at her as he dug in his pocket for it, and handed the pen over.

  Verity let him stare around the room for a bit, composing her introduction in her head before beginning. “There are three centrifuges here. Two are for exercising horses in, and the other is for staff to use.” She indicated the centrifuges with her hand. The entrances to the larger two on one side were closed off, the panels above them lit in red. “Sergeant Black and Private Ferguson are using the horse centrifuges for the next hour, so we can use the staff one first to give you an idea of it.”

  Verity stepped up to the door of the personnel centrifuge and the green light above it. “You’re not permitted to take more than five people into a centrifuge, or two people and one horse. You’re not allowed to piss and shit in the centrifuges.”

  Vladimir glanced sharply at her. “If I want to do that, I’ll go to the lavatory.”

  Verity rolled her eyes. “I mean you’re not allowed for your horse to do it.” She bent her knee and ducked through the hatch. Inside the drum, five chairs with seatbelts lay with their backs welded to the floor, their stems riveted to the curved wall, stretching all the way around and covered with grooved non-slip synthetic rubber. The light came from white panels running around the edges of the ceiling and floor. Various pieces of exercise equipment were bolted to the walls.

  When Vladimir had climbed in, Verity pointed to the hatch. “To close the door, you need to press here. You do it,” she added when he remained standing there, staring at her.

  When Vladimir had pressed the button to close the door and tightened the wheel that locked it, the bar above the panel on the floor between the chairs turned green. Verity sat on a chair beside it, lying on her back and bending her knees so her legs fitted into the seat. “Everyone needs to be in a seat before you start or stop the centrifuge,” she explained as she fastened the seatbelt.

  Vladimir glanced around as he got into the chair. “Isn’t it the wrong way round? Shouldn’t it be vertical?”

  “It’ll tilt up into position when it reaches full speed.” Verity checked to make sure his seatbelt was on. “When you’re ready, press start.”

  Vladimir reached across from his seat and pressed the button. A klaxon sounded, muffled from outside the centrifuge, and the faint sound of the motor began. As the motor’s pitch increased, Verity felt her back slide down the chair until her weight rested mainly on her thighs and buttocks in the seat of the chair. With a whirr and a thunk, her center of gravity shifted forward. Vladimir looked around with a wide-eyed expression, and she could see how quickly he breathed. The green light above the control panel lit up once more.

  Verity unfastened her seatbelt and stood, feeling uncomfortably heavy. She stretched and tried a few paces, her feet dragging. “You can get up now.”

  “It’s not even,” said Vladimir as he got out of the chair. He looked at his feet. “It’s fluctuating.”

  “Of course it is, it’s because it sometimes is in opposition to gravity and sometimes is working with it. It’s twenty-eight twenty-fifths at the top of a rotation and twenty-two twenty-fifths at the bottom.” Verity walked at a quick pace, in a circuit around what had previously been the walls. She passed Vladimir again, and went to one of the treadmills. “If you use these in space installations,” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran, “where there’s no gravity, you don’t get that wobbling feel. Oh, and if you use those weights, you need to put them back in the holder and put the chain back on when you’ve finished, so they can’t fall out.”

  “Oh great! I can’t connect to the ANT either!” Vladimir fiddled with some small dumbbells.

  “The centrifuge is surrounded by a metal cage. The signal gets blocked out.”

  “What’s the point in doing exercises?” Vladimir sat hard on the weightlifting bench. “It’s a waste of time and you get sweaty and disgusting. Isn’t it enough to stop my muscles from atrophying if I just come in here for an hour or so once a day and walk about a bit and then read a research paper or something?”

  “No, it isn’t.” Verity jumped off the treadmill with it still running and went over to him. She put the barbell in position on the bench and screwed weights onto each end. She lay on the bench with her knees bent, and started her usual fifty reps.

  Vladimir crouched on the floor to one side. He put one of the dumbbells on the floor in front of him, and watched it roll from side to side with the fluctuation of gravity. Verity rolled her eyes at him between reps.

  “What is it you actually do, Rambo?” Vladimir picked up the dumbbell and got to his feet.

  “I’m a member of the Magnolia Order, and I’m a sergeant in the Meritocracy’s Sky Force, research division. I should have thought it was obvious.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. I’m asking you what a sergeant in the Meritocracy’s Sky Force, research division, actually does, aside from pump iron and ride horses into people, and be generally rude and disagreeable.”

  Verity shook her hair and glared at him. “Yesterday I killed a spy who was trying to escape the complex with information.”

  “Spy? What spy?” Vladimir picked up another barbell. He held it with both hands and straightened his arms above his head.

  Verity made a distasteful face. “Can’t you do that somewhere else? Your shirt’s not long enough and your belly’s hanging out of your shorts.”

  Vladimir frowned, but he put down the barbell and gave the hem of his t-shirt a firm tug downward with both hands.

  “I didn’t speak to him. Probably he was Russian.” Verity muttered under her breath, thirty-seven.

  “How can anyone be a spy when there are only two exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act?” Vladimir sat on the opposite bench, a dumbbell in each hand.

  “Well, clearly by stealing information that fits into one of the exemption categories.” Forty. “All data has to be available to any member of the Electorate, which includes military and research information, but there are the two exemptions of data from original research that has not yet been published, and information that concerns individuals’ private details. Considering this is a research base where humans live, it could have been either of those, and it could also have been that he was not a member of the Electorate and was in fact a foreigner from a country not under Meritocratic rule.” Forty-five.

  “So which was it, then?”

  Forty-six. “I dunno.”

  Vladimir dropped his hands, leaning his forearms on his thighs so the dumbbells dangled. “You don’t know? You killed someone for a reason you don’t know?”

  “It has to have been for one of those reasons, or there wouldn’t have been an order to stop him gone through the ANT. I can find out what the reason was any time I like!”

  “But you didn’t?”

  Verity reached fifty and levered the barbell back onto the stand. She sat up. “I can’t now, because we’re in the centrifuge. It wouldn’t tell me the information he stole anyway, because that would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. All it would say was whether it was unpublished research, personal information or foreign theft.”

  “And what, you don’t know which of those it was? You don’t care?”

  “Well, no, I don’t!” said Verity. “It’s not important which it is. All that’s important is that he stole information and I stopped him from getting away with it!” She glanced at the readout on the control panel. “Our hour’s almost up. I’ve wasted most of it talking to you. We had better put this gear back.”

  “Does Commodore Smith have
you train all the newcomers because of your scintillating people skills?” Vladimir asked as he went back to the seats.

  Verity reminded herself that she ought to try harder at this. Vladimir might be reporting back to Smith on how she conducted herself, for all she knew. He wasn’t exactly making it easy for her. Why did he have to be so dismissive and apathetic about the training and everything? If he’d been like Gecko, training him would be easy. She thought about what Vladimir had said as she took a chair and fastened her seatbelt. Although she said nothing to him, she made a mental note to look up the reason for the warrant later that day. Perhaps it would shed some light on the uneasy feeling she still had about John Aaron.

  “I’ve booked one of the horse centrifuges for an hour commencing in twenty minutes,” she said as they disembarked. “So if we come back and someone else is using it, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  They walked back down the main corridor to the horse block.

  The stall where the horse Verity had ridden yesterday was kept--the one John Aaron had absconded with--stood empty, the racks opposite it unoccupied. The stall beside it that had housed the horse the spy had taken, the one that had fallen, was also empty, but the saddle and armor had been returned. Seeing an empty stall with tack laid out before it gave Verity an odd, lonely feeling. None of the horses had names. It was intended to stop people becoming attached to them, yet they all had their own personalities. Verity recalled the dead horse used to like being brushed, although it hated having its tail combed and its mane clipped. She supposed another horse would have to be shipped in now and it would live in the dead horse’s stall.

  “Okay,” Verity began in a low voice. “Rule one about fearless horses. Never stare a horse in the face. That’s horse language for a threat. These horses are all fight and no flight, and if you stare at them you’re going to get hurt.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see Vladimir making notes on a writing slate with a stylus, and sighed. “Why are you writing it down?”